For projects that require more than one person to complete, the multiple participants often need to meet to achieve the aims of the project. Where the participants are all closely located geographically, the participants can meet at some agreed-upon place to hold the conference. But if the participants are not closely located geographically, it can be difficult for the participants to physically meet somewhere. At least one participant would have to travel to the meeting site. Depending on how far away that person is, travel expenses may be significant. For example, if one participant is located is located in Los Angeles, Calif. and another participant is located in New York, N.Y., on participant or the other would have to travel roughly 3,000 miles to meet with the other. Aside from the cost of travel itself, such long distances require a great deal of time: several hours each way. Or if one participant in the project happens to be on vacation, that participant would have to return from vacation or the meeting would have to be delayed.
Instead of meeting face-to-face, the participants can conference using their telephones. Most telephone systems today support conference calling, but such systems are generally limited to two or three calls in conference together. To address this problem, companies have developed conference systems that are essentially unlimited in terms of the number of participants. Each participant dials a telephone number to reach the host of the conference, and then dials a pass code to access the specific conference. The conference host is then responsible for connecting the caller to the target conference based on the pass code. The party that arranged the conference call is then billed for call.
FIG. 1 illustrates how such a system can operate. In FIG. 1, host machine 105 acts as a host for the telephone conference. Telephones 110, 115, 120, and 125 dial in to host machine 105 using the appropriate telephone number (of which there can be more than one, if the host offers multiple different access numbers). Based on the input pass codes, telephone 110 is connected to the same conference as telephone 115; telephones 120 and 125 are also conferenced, but are participating in a different conference call.
But there are various problems that can arise using these systems. First, some pass codes are available for limited durations. For example, when a conference call is established for a particular day and time, the host might issue a pass code that is only good for the expected duration of the conference call. This means that if the person arranging the conference call does not provide the correct pass code to the other participants in the conference, the participants might not be able to connect to the conference. This situation could occur if the person who arranges a conference call has an older message that explains most of the details about the conference, and the person arranging the conference call forgets to change the old pass code to the new pass code. This situation could also arise if the person arranging the conference call makes a simple typographical error when adding the pass code to the message to the other participants.
Even if a pass code is essentially usable forever (for example, a company might want to reserve a pass code that can be used for impromptu conferences), there can be multiple conferences (scheduled for different times) assigned to that pass code. If a participant dials into the conference at the wrong time, he might end up participating in the wrong conference. This situation could arise if the person arranging the conference accidentally indicated the wrong time, or if the conference was re-scheduled but not all the participants were aware of that fact.
A third problem can arise even if all the participants receive valid information about the conference call. Specifically, the person arranging the conference call might provide one way to access the conference. But the provided access information might not be the best way for all the participants to access the conference. For some participants, there might be better ways to access the conference, but they do not know about those better ways to access the conference.
A need remains for a way to addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art.